US shows the world where it stands on press rights in Egypt

In a chorus of condemnation, rights groups and some Western governments on Monday criticized jail terms imposed by an Egyptian court on three journalists from Al Jazeera’s English-language service, while the network itself said the punishment defied “logic, sense, and any semblance of justice.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/world/middleeast/sentencing-of-journalists-in-egypt-draws-condemnation.html?ref=world&_r=0 The sentences came one day after Secretary of State John Kerry met with Mr. Sisi in Cairo and signaled the Obama administration’s readiness to repair relations with Egypt.
While Mr. Kerry pledged that the United States would soon fully restore military aid worth $650 million, he also said he “emphasized also our strong support for upholding the universal rights and freedoms of all Egyptians, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”(lol)
Other more condemning reactions, from as far afield as the Netherlands and Australia, came within minutes of the sentences against Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, an Egyptian- Canadian, Peter Greste, an Australian, and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, who have all been in jail since December. They were each sentenced to seven years in prison for conspiring to broadcast false news in order to destabilize Egypt. Mr. Mohamed was sentenced to an additional three years on another charge.
In a statement, Al Anstey, the managing director of Al Jazeera English, which is based in Doha, Qatar, said the journalists were guilty only of “defending people’s right to know what’s going on in their world.”
The statement continued: “Not a shred of evidence was found to support the extraordinary and false charges against them. At no point during the long drawn out ‘trial’ did the absurd allegations stand up to scrutiny. There were many moments during the hearings where in any other court of law, the trial would be thrown out. There were numerous irregularities in addition to the lack of evidence to stand up the ill-conceived allegations.”
“There is no justification whatsoever in the detention of our three colleagues for even one minute. To have detained them for 177 days is an outrage. To have sentenced them defies logic, sense, and any semblance of justice,” Mr. Anstey said.
“There is only one sensible outcome now — for the verdict to be overturned, and justice to be recognized by Egypt,” he added. The outrage found a ready echo among rights groups and governments
pressing Egypt to respect freedom of expression. “This is a deeply disappointing result,” Britain’s ambassador to Egypt, James
Watt, told Reuters. “The Egyptian people have expressed over the past three years their wish for Egypt to be a democracy. Without freedom of the press there is no foundation for democracy.” Two British journalists were among 11 sentenced in absentia to 10-year terms, news reports said.
In London, Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was “appalled” by the verdicts and said the case had been marked by “unacceptable procedural shortcomings.” Mr. Hague said the Egyptian ambassador in London would be summoned in protest.
Sarah Leah Whitson, a director of Human Rights Watch, said the verdicts showed that “in today’s Egypt, simply practicing professional journalism is a crime.” Amnesty International called the outcome “a dark day for media freedom in Egypt.”
Michelle Stanistreet, the general secretary of Britain’s National Union of Journalists, labeled the sentences “an outrageous decision and travesty of justice made by a kangaroo court,” while Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, which campaigns for freedom of expression, accused the Egyptian government of “rapidly unwinding recently won freedoms, including freedom of the press.”
The verdicts drew a strong condemnation from Mr. Greste’s home country, Australia, where Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had spoken about the case to Egypt’s president, the former military strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“I did make the point that as an Australian journalist, Peter Greste would not have been supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, he would have simply been reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Abbott told reporters, according to The Associated Press.
“The point I made was that in the long run, a free and vigorous media are good for democracy, good for security, good for stability.”
Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said the government had been “shocked” and “deeply dismayed” by the verdict and “appalled” by the severity of the sentence.
“The Australian government simply cannot understand it, based on the evidence that was presented in the case,” the minister said.
In the Netherlands, the government took issue with a sentence passed in absentia on a Dutch journalist, Rena Netjes, news reports said, summoning the Egyptian ambassador to protest the outcome and saying it would raise the matter with the European Union.
The sentences came one day after Secretary of State John Kerry met with Mr. Sisi in Cairo and signaled the Obama administration’s readiness to repair relations with Egypt.
While Mr. Kerry pledged that the United States would soon fully restore military aid worth $650 million, he also said he “emphasized also our strong support for upholding the universal rights and freedoms of all Egyptians, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”